


Baton Pass

by eyegnats



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Captivity, Multi, Protectiveness, Sexual Content, Tournaments, brief descriptions of violence, close bonds growing closer, overly complex deathgame rules, prizefight, trans felix, whump-lite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27093715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyegnats/pseuds/eyegnats
Summary: Deep in the catacombs beneath Enbarr, a captured Felix, Ingrid, and Sylvain play a deathgame meant to drive them apart.In many ways, it does the opposite.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 9
Kudos: 76





	Baton Pass

**Author's Note:**

> This one's a little bit... looser, in writing style. A little more indulgent. Apologies.
> 
> CW: tournament-sanctioned murder, sexual content, unplanned pregnancy mention.

Felix isn’t sure he’s seen a prize more beautiful than a knife being removed from Sylvain’s throat.

They do tournaments differently in Adrestia. In Faerghus, they’re a celebration. Tournaments exist as sport and entertainment for festivals, their actions regulated and their injuries numerous but rarely mortal. In Adrestia, they’re illegal—and to the death. There’s theories that criminalizing the act may have pushed it further into depravity, but Felix does not bother himself over the details. Felix’s mind has no room for politics. He only thinks of Sylvain, breathing easier, and of Ingrid, screaming at the top of her lungs as she bashes in the skull of some unfortunate competitor.

The crowd goes wild. They like women in particular. Felix gets his own fair share of cheers but when a woman decimates a competitor in the ring the cries from the crowd are loud, and jeering, and rabid, and lustful in a way that makes Felix’s blood boil. 

Ingrid pulls up from her late rival. Her chest heaves, deep and rushing with adrenaline. She stares up at the private box at the top of the ring. She is not screaming anymore. Instead, she yells, “it’s okay, Sylvain! I am alright!”

Sylvain is holding back tears. There was never a knife at his throat, not really. The closest blade they can cut him with is Ingrid’s potential demise, but she has won, and so he presses his palms into his sockets and sinks down into his seat and lets out a single sob from relief. He is so relieved. He’s the most beautiful, relieved prize Felix has ever seen. The blade has been removed. The three of them are safe, for now.

Someone enters their guarded, private box that looms above the crowd in a sick reflection of the noble treatment Felix is accustomed. Yuri, Faerghus born, Adrestia forged, greets them. He slaps a hand on Felix’s shoulder.

“Great show, hm?” he asks, all teeth. Felix bites back the urge to rip his body away from the man’s grip. Sylvain still has his head in his hands. Ingrid is leaving the dirt pit where she fought and won, on her way back to them. This is not the time for Felix to provoke their captor.

Yuri settles his hand on the back of Felix’s chair. It’s a casual action, but as threatening as if it had settled on his throat. “She’s really something, Fraldarius,” he says, pleased. “Your family was just going to knock her up?”

“Shut your mouth,” Felix says. He attempts to keep his cool but Yuri is skilled in the art of rattling.

“And the turnout,” Yuri muses, “up a fourth once we slipped her name in the promotion. Crested, lady deathfighter, fallen huntress from the north, a fan favorite returns—a bit rough around the edges, but what she lacks in sex appeal she compensates in skill.” Yuri laughs. Sylvain’s body seizes and Felix knows he needs to derail the situation before Sylvain does something they’ll all regret.

“Isn’t it about time you let her claim her prize?” Felix says, cutting to the point. 

Yuri asks, “eager to get back in the ring, little champion?”

“Always.”

Yuri grins. “Then I’m a man of my word.” He steps back. He opens the door to the underground arena’s prison of a box. Felix hears him chatter with the guards out there, the guards that keep them trapped inside and forced to watch the carnage below. Sylvain finally lifts his head.

“Let me do it this time,” he says, weakly. Felix does not look at him.

“No.”

“Felix, please.”

“Not happening.”

Sylvain flinches. “I can’t—I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep letting you and Ingrid take the fall. I’m as capable as either of you at surviving. I can handle it.”

“No,” Felix says.

“Felix,” Sylvain pleads, “I feel like I’m losing it. I can’t sleep. It’s nothing compared to being down there, but it’s—“

“I don’t care,” Felix says. He refuses to make eye contact with his oldest friend. 

Sylvain sighs. “...She needs to rest.” Felix does not respond to him. “You watched her tonight. She’s slowing down. If you win, when you win, let me take the next fall.”

Felix is surprised Sylvain was paying such close attention to Ingrid’s fights when he had watched the majority of the three-round bracket through his fingers. He’s not wrong: Ingrid had injured her knee in a fight just last week. It was nothing but a meek sprain but it was enough to press her dodges to uncertain chance in today’s match. Felix curls a lip. “She’s not fragile,” he tells Sylvain.

Sylvain sounds shockingly accusatory. “They’re wearing her down. You’re letting them wear her down.”

“The two of us have a deal. She’ll let me know if she feels she can’t hold her end.” She will. Probably.

Guards enter the room. With them, an exhausted Ingrid. Felix stands and Sylvain rushes to her side. He holds her bloodsmeared cheeks—she took a nasty nose hit in the second round—and kisses her lips with such ferocity she stumbles back and loses her balance. He catches her in his arms and pulls her flush against him.

“Sylvain,” she says, against him. He kisses her again. It’s not deep, more of a blunt mash of their mouths, but it captures every inch of desperation both of them felt for the entirety of the evening. She speaks to him, their lips barely parted, “Sylvain. I’m okay.” 

Yuri slinks back into the room, snide. He’s an unpleasant audience to their reunion. Felix scowls at him, then at the tough, warrior guards that flank his sides.

“You’re taking Gautier again, then?” Yuri asks.

Ingrid goes stiff where she’s curled herself around Sylvain. She turns her face to look at their forced ringleader, her stare deadly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Huntress. Did I interrupt?” Yuri gestures a hand of faux surprise at himself.

Ingrid says, fierce and terrifying and still pumping with the spirit of battle, “when we are freed from this place I will hang you by your feet from the wall of Fhirdiad and leave you to the Goddess.”

Yuri makes no reaction. “I would see fit to go that dramatically,” he says.

“You’ll make a fine meal for the birds.”

“Too bony,” he says. “No meat. You, however, were an absolute  _ feast _ tonight.”

That same twitch of reaction washes over Sylvain—the tightening of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw. Felix places a warding hand on his bicep. If there is a place for a brawl, it is not in a tiny box several stories above the ground and with only one exit. Ingrid must sense it too, because she proclaims: “I choose Sylvain.”

Yuri gives them all a look of genuine disappointment. “Again,” he says.

Ingrid nods. Sylvain looks to her, and says, “you don’t have to do this. I can handle it, Ingrid—“

“I choose Sylvain as my prize,” Ingrid states.

Yuri saunters forward to sling an arm around Felix. Felix does not provoke him. Felix has learned not to slap his arm away, but he does look in the opposite direction. “Come now, Huntress,” Yuri says, chiding her, “do you really want to spare Sylvain yet again? Your good buddy Felix here might think you’re playing favorites.”

“Sylvain’s safe. Felix fights. My reasoning is none of your concern,” Ingrid replies. Felix nods. Sylvain looks angry—frustrated, at the situation, at them.

“Every week it’s the same,” Yuri says, bemoaning her. He waves broad at the three of them. “Every week! Now, when I pitched this little prize fight shenanigan to The Emperor I promised her that you’d be ripping each other’s throats out by the end of the moon. And here we are, moons past, bound even closer with some foolish little deathpact to protect the Gautier. I don’t know why I’m still bothering to indulge you.”

The rules Yuri had gifted to them upon their arrival at the tournament ring had been simple. One of them was to win a bracket of deathmatches. Upon victory, they would choose among the remaining two a prize to save, and an unfortunate leftover to fight in the next tournament. Felix can see how on paper it rang with treachery and the breakdown of lifelong kinship. Unfortunately for Yuri, their bonds were not so destructible.

“I choose,” Ingrid grits, teeth bared, her arms still wrapped around Sylvain’s shoulders, “Sylvain.”

Sylvain fought in Yuri’s deadly prizefights only once. Felix and Ingrid had watched him win by the thinnest slice of skin from the horror of their audience box. They had decided, together, to never let him step inside the ring again. They would never choose to save the other—they would only ever select Sylvain as their prize.

“‘I choose Sylvain,’ ‘I choose Sylvain,’ ‘Sylvain,’ ‘Sylvain,’” Yuri calls. He impersonates them like a mockingbird, pitching his tone in some whining, twisted impression of their voices. “You know he’s fucking both of you, right?”

They do. They don’t respond.

“Ugh.” Yuri rolls his eyes, dragging the word off the back of his tongue. “Don’t be foolish. He’s using you.”

He’s not.

Yuri waits, and then sighs. “No takers on that bait, then? Alright, I’ll stop poking at the hornet’s nest,” he says. He tilts his mouth closer to Felix’s ear, and adds, lower, “but you must know, Fraldarius, he gives it to her nice and slow. Like she’s a princess. Does he give it to you like that? Has he ever?”

Felix scoffs. “You won’t shake us with infantile drama.”

“Oh? So you’re not bothered? Not even a little?”

“No.”

“He offered to marry her, you know. Though most men will say such things with a pretty woman underneath them.”

Felix narrows his eyes. “I have assurance that you have not been witness to their bed.”

“And what makes you so sure that I, a master spymaster, haven’t?”

Felix rolls his head over and looks Yuri dead in the eye. “Ingrid prefers to be on top.”

Yuri pauses at this, briefly. He stares back into Felix’s glare. Then, he laughs. He untangles his arm around Felix and pulls back. He claps his hands together. “I see,” he says. “A bluff has been called, clearly. That’s funny, though. Don’t you think that’s funny?”

They don’t.

Yuri says, “you two really are content to share him, then. Even if it costs you your lives. Remarkable. Unprecedented. A once in a lifetime bond. I’m going to have a wonderful time destroying you from the inside out.” A heckle of a laugh—worse than any crowd. Felix wrestles back a growl.

Yuri falls serious, suddenly, his mask of levity falling off with a dull thunk. He looks to the guards behind him. Says, “Fraldarius again.”

Felix’s arms are grabbed and wrenched behind his back. All of three of them are too used to the sight to react with horror, but there is nothing stopping the upset that plagues Ingrid and Sylvain’s faces when Felix is pulled from them. They will spend a night or three in moderate luxury in the victor’s quarters. They will share a bed and maybe more in reward for Ingrid’s triumph, but it will be fitful. They will know what is coming. They will soon sit in a box and bite their fingernails and Felix will fight. Felix will fight for his life. Felix will fight and win so that they might not feel the guilt of sending him to his death if he falls. It’s a worthy cause. Worthier than anything he ever fought in Faerghus.

It’s not an accident that Yuri keeps them separated.

Felix is placed in a cell. They’re deep, deep under Enbarr in catacombs and dungeons repurposed by the underworld. It’s lonely, without Sylvain and Ingrid. Felix rests light on a cot for the unseen, artificial night. He’s given breakfast in the morning. He is not deprived of anything. The prison he’s found himself in does not seek to starve him of necessities. Yuri is not that outright malicious. No, his treachery was far subtler. Yuri plays himself as a larger act but his real machinations are small and intricate—all whispered doubts and unspoken fears. Yuri does not want them to starve. Yuri wants them fed, so when they do rip one another to shreds, it is out of hatred and not desperation.

Felix solidifies his pact with Ingrid in his mind. He would be lying if he said it wasn’t growing unsteady. Ingrid is as certain as ever, as strong as steel. But she is wearing down silently. Felix is too. It made more sense to develop a three-way system, each taking a turn, fighting in rotation. It would give them the least amount of time in the tournament ring, the maximum amount of break between matches. It was the safest plan until an opportunity for escape presented itself.

_ “Sylvain isn’t as fast as us,”  _ Ingrid had whispered to Felix when he chose her as his prize over Sylvain, the night before they both watched Sylvain nearly die in the ring.  _ “It doesn’t matter how tough he is. If he takes every hit he’ll be injured at best, dead at worst.” _

Felix hates himself for strategizing under Yuri’s ruleset. Felix is not one to be constrained by trivial boundaries, much less those forged outside his Faerghan blood. He is not a schemer, but he is, to the sure chagrin of his father, a survivor. He does not care if he appears compliant. He will hatch whatever plan he must to keep them all breathing. He will do whatever it takes to deliver Sylvain and Ingrid to their homelands, himself. And he rests easy knowing he will slit Yuri’s throat at the first opportunity.

Felix is allowed to train that afternoon. There is not another tournament scheduled for four days, so he’s allowed to make use of the training weapons and equipment as he sees fit. He sticks with a light sword. He’s fast enough to compensate for the choice being predictable, strong enough to make its hits count.

He is escorted to dinner with Yuri. He doesn’t usually eat with his captor, and when he has it has always been as a victor. Yuri eats in silence at their table. He sniffs at his food, as if checking for poison. He devours a rather plain meal for a man Felix knows to have accumulated vast connections and wealth in Adrestia. Yuri sets down his fork.

“What do I have to do,” Yuri asks, addressing him for the first time that evening, “to get you to not pick Sylvain when you win your next scuffle?”

Scuffle. As if it is a game. As if it is for fun. “As if I would tell you,” Felix scoffs, taking a drink of wine.

“You’ve got a price, then?” Yuri perks up.

“Obviously,” Felix says. “You can threaten me, you can threaten her. You can hold a knife to Sylvain’s throat and make us do just about anything. Our weakpoints are not a mystery.”

“Easy to take advantage of,” Yuri says, leaning a cheek on his hand.

“But you won’t do that,” Felix replies.

“Oh?”

Felix stuffs Yuri’s meal into his mouth in large chunks. He’s stabbing his fork into a chunk of rib when he says, “you haven’t done that, because then you’d be a common enemy. And you don’t want that.”

Yuri smiles. “How very astute, Fraldarius.”

Felix’s food grows too chewy in his mouth. He’s barely able to swallow. He eats in as much protest as he can. He would refuse Yuri’s base niceties entirely if he could afford to starve. If this was a normal prison, he could and he would.

“Ingrid’s nursing that leg of hers, isn’t she?” Yuri asks, with ungenuine curiosity. “Sad to hear the healer couldn’t fix that up.”

Felix’s hand tightens on his fork. “She’s fine,” he says.

“I’m sure she will be. Nothing a little rest and recovery can’t fix,” Yuri says. “She just needs a bit of time, hm? That’s all.”

Felix stops talking. He has indulged Yuri enough for the evening. They eat in silence, again, but Yuri seems content to let Felix simmer beneath it as if in a large cooking pot.

“It’s true, you know. You three are easy to keep in line,” Yuri declares to seemingly the room, and only once Felix’s plate is almost empty. Felix refuses to be his audience. “Threaten one of you and the other two straighten right up.”

Felix shoves his plate across the table with an aggressive rattle.

Yuri says, “most of the men I get in here don’t have a lot to lose. It’s a nice change of pace.”

“I’m done,” Felix snaps.

Yuri still has that same, thoughtful expression on his face. It’s orchestrated. Yuri hums. “You know your fancy noble rules, Fraldarius,” he chides at him, “ask to be excused.”

  
  
Felix’s brain comes back into focus the second he knows his opponent has stopped breathing. The roar of the crowd hits him like the wave of a battalion and he blinks, up, into the crowds and torches encircling him. He looks, up, further, to the high audience box that looms above it all. Blood drips from his forehead into his eyes.

Sylvain and Ingrid are horrified.

“I’m fine,” he says, but he knows his words are not loud enough. His voice is hoarse where it grinds out from his vocal chords in a fine powder. His mouth tastes like copper.

He stumbles to the exit of the sandy pit of an arena. Guards await him, as always. They do not assist him as he ascends up to the box. They only hover behind, wheezing with the occasional laugh as he struggles to return to his family.

Sylvain is there. Sylvain is always there. He’s solid and dependable when Felix all but falls into him. Felix is injured. Felix is not sure where he is injured but his walk is unsteady and he’s lost blood. A light, woozy feeling coats his senses and Sylvain steadies him further.

“He needs a healer,” Ingrid snaps. Her straight, bitter anger falls upon Yuri’s uncaring ears.

“In due time, Huntress,” Yuri remarks, his gaze falling over Felix. “Let our little champion choose his prize.”

The expectation in Ingrid’s eyes is fierce as ever. Felix nods to her, even as Sylvain whispers in his ear, “let me have this. Let me fight. She needs to rest—“

“I choose Sylvain,” Felix decides, unmoved.

Yuri stares back. He’s distinctly unimpressed. Sylvain lets out an angry rush of air from his nose. His grip on Felix tightens ever-so-slightly. “No,” he says, ever-wounded with their protection of him.

“Sylvain is my prize,” Felix says again.

“No,” Sylvain says, breathless and furious and unable to do anything but continue to support Felix’s weight. “Felix,” Sylvain says, and stalls. Felix can hear him planning his next words. Felix knows something is coming because his eyes blank from shimmering with concern to something darker. Steeled. He says, “you have to let me—”

“Stop it, Sylvain,” Ingrid says. “You’re making us appear weak.”

Sylvain’s words halt at Ingrid’s berating. His mouth flexes in a dozen unspoken words. He says, finally: “Ingrid is pregnant.”

Both Ingrid and Yuri’s eyes shoot wide, in an instant. Where Ingrid’s face flares to a level of anger Felix has rarely seen, Yuri’s splits into a smile.

“I am  _ not,” _ Ingrid yells.

“She is,” Sylvain states, quickly. “She didn’t want me to say anything but I can’t—this can’t go on.”

Ingrid appears as if she has been slapped across the face. “I’m not!” she yells, again, taken aback.

Yuri’s expression is one of absolute delight. He stays silent. He steps away from them.

“I knocked her up,” Sylvain is whispering, close to Felix and desperate in his pleading. “I know I fucked up, Felix, but I can fix this. Let me protect her. We can protect her.”

“He’s,” Ingrid says, shocked and baffled and more than a little exasperated, “he’s lying, Felix. You must know he’s trying to provoke you!”

“Sylvain,” Felix says. His voice sounds distant. It echoes from his throat, he can feel the vibrations of it, but it sounds so very far away. He wipes at the sticky, red liquid running into his eyes.

“Let me fight,” Sylvain says. “This once at least, Felix. Please. I can’t lose her.”

“He’s lying!” Ingrid calls out.

Felix blinks. He coughs, and says, “Sylvain. Don’t lie to me.”

“I wouldn’t. Not about this.”

“He’s lying,” Ingrid repeats. Her voice rises. “I would never be so stupid. So uncareful. Sylvain is spinning this, Felix, he’s—“ Her attentions snap to Yuri.  _ “You,” _ she says.

“Me?” he replies, innocently.

Ingrid is furious. “You’ve fed him this. This…  _ story.” _

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Yuri replies. “Congratulations, by the way. When are you due?”

Ingrid steps forward to punch Yuri but he ducks, effortlessly, and skips a few easy steps back. Ingrid overreaches and a guard catches the unbalanced arc of her first. “You!” she screams at their captor, struggling against the arms of some burly grappler. “You did this!”

Felix’s vision is hazy. He dips, and Sylvain catches him. He finds himself braced against Sylvain’s chest as a flurry of commotion and yelling fits echoes around him. He feels detached. In the way he sometimes would, on the battlefield, where there were too many slit throats to register as human and he felt himself slipping into some boarish haze of destruction. Sylvain hugs him. Sylvain whispers, against his temple, “please, I won’t die,” and, “remember our promise?” Sylvain’s hand cups the back of his head and says, “you need to rest. She needs to rest. Please.” Sylvain has never sounded so desperate. "Please."

Felix refinds his stance. He pulls himself from Sylvain’s arms, knocking away the hands that Sylvain uses to steady him. “I’m fine,” Felix says, cold, and Sylvain releases him but does not stray far. When he does pull his arms away, Felix sees that the front of Sylvain’s shirt is covered in Felix’s own blood.

Ingrid struggles against two guards. Her feet kick out. She catches eye contact with Felix and hisses, “I wouldn’t. We wouldn’t! Don’t be a fool. I would never—”

“Ingrid’s my choice,” Felix states, somewhat slurred. He feels unwell.

Sylvain sucks in a breath beside him. Felix is not sure if it is thankful. He thinks it might actually be scared. Yuri laughs. Felix ignores it.

Ingrid screams at the top of her lungs.

  
  
  
“I will never forgive you for this,” Ingrid says to him the minute he is shoved through the door of the victor’s quarters. He’s fresh from a healer, a wound on his scalp knit pink with new life. The door shuts and locks behind him. Felix has a terrible headache.

Sylvain has been taken from them.

“You are a foolish, petulant little—” Ingrid sucks in a harsh breath. “Do you really think I’d be so  _ stupid?” _

Felix ignores her. The victor’s quarter’s are about as nice of a prison as one would expect to find in the earth beneath Enbarr. Felix ignores Ingrid in favor of dragging himself to a heavy, velvet couch and collapsing atop it.

“I am not so stupid,” Ingrid says, again. She is plagued with upset. She falls silent, and alongside the darkness the hand Felix places over his eyes brings, Felix finds his first peace of the day.

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “I had to.”

“I’m not fucking pregnant,” Ingrid spits back.

“I know.”

Ingrid is hardly listening to him. “I cannot believe you would play along with Sylvain’s silver tongue. I cannot  _ believe _ this. He went to dinner with Yuri and came back all hushed. I knew he was up to something, and I didn’t press back against it, and now—you. You were foolish enough to fall for it.”

“I know you’re not pregnant,” Felix repeats.

“You know what it’s like for me, to have this used against me, like I’m some lurid, narrative contrivance—”

“If you were pregnant you would never have told Sylvain.”

Only then does Ingrid stop. Felix lowers his hand from his eyes, and sees her standing near him. Her hair has grown out since their capture. It falls in uneven pieces around her face as she looms above.

She says, slowly, “then why, pray tell, have you double-crossed me?”

He has no excuses. “Your leg,” he responds, simply. 

Ingrid’s fingers form into fists. She’s tight, for a second, drawn out over the sharp edge of her anger. She looks as if she is going to lift a hand to strike him. The minute she raises her fist, however, it’s as if the strings moving her snap. Everything rushes from her body language in an instant. The grimace of her mouth falls.

She slowly sits herself on the floor beside Felix’s couch. She pulls her knees up and tucks herself against them. She looks agitated in a foreign way to what Felix knows of Ingrid. She is no longer angry, infuriated, frustrated, or violent. She offers him only a bleak, saddened quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Felix says. It’s the second time he’s said it but she deserves it.

“If he dies it will be on you,” Ingrid notes.

“If he dies it will be on me,” Felix agrees.

They share a bed despite everything. They haven’t shared a bed in a long time, not since their pact to shield Sylvain.

It is not a particularly warm bed. They each lie flat on their backs, barely touching. Their eyes stay trained on the ceiling. It’s enough for Felix to just be near her. He hasn’t shared space with her for longer than fleeting, transactional prize decisions in two moons. He missed her. And, in the huffed sigh she gives him before clutching his hand, she missed him too.

Felix falls asleep to a cold shoulder but in the morning, Ingrid is unable to keep up their barricade. Felix allows her to hold him as he does Sylvain, as Sylvain and Ingrid hold each other, harsh and close and seeking skin more than softness. It escalates, as it does with him and Sylvain, as it does between Sylvain and Ingrid, and Felix allows Ingrid to roll atop him and tangle their legs and seize up, together, in tight fast motions.

“I missed you,” she tells him, when they’re close enough to confess.

This is where things are not as they are with Sylvain. Ingrid is bold but unpracticed. Sylvain knows things, how to pace each step and motion. Sylvain orchestrates sex with an deadly precision. He knows how to make things pleasurable. He knows how to time things right, how to think in broader arcs instead of immediate gratification. Sylvain knows how to enjoy himself without losing himself. Ingrid, with all the grace she possesses, simply sinks her teeth into Felix’s shoulder.

“Fuck,” he hisses. They’re still thrashing against each other. Their hips close, Ingrid’s thigh between his legs. It’s enough to just lose themselves in this. It has been too long. There is some freedom, in not following Sylvain’s patterns, in refusing any touch that isn’t bruising, in teethmarks on shoulders, in not offering oral. Ingrid grinds against him and groans. He should probably touch her, somewhere. He should probably do more than scratch up her back. They should be soft with one another. Sylvain is soft with them. They should probably undress, at least. Felix feels his underclothes grow uncomfortably damp. Raw, where he continues to rut against Ingrid’s body.

They collapse in a pile of clothes and sheets and sweat, eventually. The whole world feels as rubbed ragged as the skin of Felix’s thighs. The dampness between both their legs has dried to a chill.

The victory quarters have a bath. They bathe together. They used to bathe together when they were children, in rivers and in basins. This is far bleaker.

Food is brought around midday and they eat, together, spread over their tiny luxury of a couch. 

“I miss Sylvain,” Ingrid notes, stuffing her face with cured, sliced beef laid over a breadroll. 

“He’ll choose you,” Felix says. 

Ingrid’s brow scrunches. “He told you?” she asks.

“I just know,” Felix replies. He wonders if this is how it happens. If this is what Yuri expects, for favorites to be played and resentments to form. Yuri will have to be disappointed yet again. Felix would die at this exact moment if it meant the two of them would carry on safe.

“He should choose you,” Ingrid says, ever logical. “You were the last one to fight, so I should go next. We can rotate through.”

“He’ll choose you,” Felix repeats. 

“Even if he does,” Ingrid says, continues, taking another bite as she speaks. There is no room for manners in overly complex deathmatch prisons. “We’ll choose him next, won’t we? We can go back to shielding him.”

Felix stays silent. His eyes are on his food.

“Won’t you?” Ingrid says, sterner. 

“Of course,” Felix states, but it doesn’t carry any conviction. Ingrid lets it drop. Neither of them have the energy to fight about an uncertain future. 

Felix dreams of death. He dreams of Yuri, stumbling into the competitor’s pit, surprised and shaken and about to be gutted by Felix’s own blade. He dreams of death for three more days, interspersed with the familiar company Ingrid offers. He has not seen her in so long, it’s difficult to not enjoy at least some of their time alone.

He awakes beside Ingrid on the day of the next tournament. It’s difficult to tell time in the underground but it feels as if he has slept enough. If Felix is to fight next, he feels ready.

His thoughts do not lie with his own fate, however.

“He’ll be alright, won’t he?” Ingrid questions, heavy, besides him. She is already up. Felix wonders if she has slept at all. She shifts her body closer to his. 

“Yes,” Felix assures her. “We’ll be back in the pit soon enough. Don’t worry.”

  
  
  


Sylvain wins with such ferocity Felix’s war-hardened gut swirls at the gore.

Sylvain returns to them coated in blood that is not his. Ingrid does not greet him. Ingrid has, on the surface at least, not forgiven him. Sylvain does not seem to care. Sylvain is fresh off the thrill of battle and has proved what he needed to: that he is strong, that he is capable, that he is not deserving of their protection. 

He presses a soft kiss to Ingrid’s cheek and she accepts it, her lips still plastered in a tight frown. 

“Forgive me?” he asks, with a fronted laugh. 

Ingrid reaches up and wipes some of the blood splattered on his cheek with her thumb. She says, full of contempt, “don’t I always?”

“Eventually.”

“Unfortunately.”

Yuri claps his hands, once, and they turn their attention to him like trained dogs. “It’s good to see you in the ring, Gautier,” he says. “I’ll need to think of a nickname for you if this is going to be a repeat showing."

Sylvain meets his sly smile, grin for grin. "Looking forward to it."

Yuri seems unimpressed with his confidence. He waves loosely to Felix and Ingrid. He says, "in the meantime, then. Go ahead. Pick your prize."

Sylvain appraises both Felix and Ingrid. He looks a bit… lost. As if the idea of making it this far was anecdotal, and now that he’s here he’s not sure what to choose. Felix feels like he has thought three-dozen rounds ahead, assuming victories and planning out recovery times. Spacing things as far as he can estimate before both he and Ingrid collapse. Sylvain stands before him as if he was expecting to be dead by the first round. It’s clear he does not know what to do.

Ingrid nods to him. “Your pick,” she assures him. “I'm next to fight, but we're both willing.”

Felix is ready to fight. He knows how Sylvain feels for Ingrid, and he’s ready to be escorted to his cell, to clash to the death in both their names all over again. He’s ready to rest easy at night knowing Sylvain and Ingrid are safe, together, and that at least two of them have staved off a looming fate just a bit longer. It’s a worthy cause. The worthiest he’s ever fought for.

“Felix,” Sylvain says.

Felix looks up. He waits for Sylvain to continue. He assumes Sylvain has stated his name to initiate a discussion of tactics or—something, anything. It is not until Ingrid is restrained by the guards that Felix realizes Sylvain has chosen him.

He’s not sure why Sylvain has chosen him. His gaze falls confused upon Ingrid and she tells him, both of them, shouting as she’s dragged away: “I’ll win. I will. Rest well. I love you.”

  
  
  


When Sylvain steps out of his post-battle bath, the water is stained a light pink with blood. He’s kept a smile upon his face since he arrived. Felix shouldn’t deny him the satisfaction of victory, even if the sensation has long grown numb to him. Yet he can’t help but feel as if something is uneven. This was never the plan. Sylvain was never supposed to fight, and even though he has survived, Felix doesn’t want his gamble to be replicated again.

Sylvain does not bother to get redressed. He plops onto their shared bed and grins over at him. Pleased, as if Ingrid is not an unknown amount of paces away awaiting a deathmatch. As if they are not still trapped in the belly of Enbarr. As if his wet hair does not leak onto the pillow.

“Don’t look so sour,” he says, smiling up at Felix. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“You should have chosen Ingrid,” Felix replies, harsh. “She’s injured. I thought we were protecting her.”

Sylvain’s face falls. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

Sylvain narrows his eyes at him. “Felix, you nearly died the last time you fought.”

Felix scoffs at him. “I did not.”

“You very nearly did,” Sylvain states, sitting up, “do you not realize that?”

Felix thinks upon the last time he fought, less than a week prior. It is hazy in his memories. He remembers Ingrid being mad at him, afterwards. He remembers blood, during. He remembers having to be lifted to a healer. “Scalp wounds bleed more,” he says, raising a hand to touch the fading pink scar on his forehead, “everyone knows that.”

“You were almost bludgeoned to death,” Sylvain says. “Ingrid and I were terrified.”

Felix does not know how to respond to straightforward accusations of his own failings. He shrugs Sylvain’s words away. “I’m fine.”

“Felix,” Sylvain says, presses, “I don’t trust you when you tell me you’re alright, anymore. I can’t afford to.”

Felix does not answer him.

“We will protect you.”

Felix does not answer him.

Sylvain takes a slow breath. “Come here,” he says.

Felix does not answer him, but he does follow Sylvain’s ensuing prompts. He allows Sylvain to lay him down in bed. He allows Sylvain to curl an arm around him. Felix has not been a prize in so long he can see why Sylvain expressed so much discomfort in it. It’s strange to be chosen. It’s unfooting to be shielded. The idea of being protected, defended, sits nauseating in his stomach. He wonders if this is what Ingrid had felt the last few days as his own choice in prizes. He wonders if this is what the both of them were fearing to feel as they selected Sylvain time and time again, over one another, over and over, each of them terrified they might one day have to suffer the horrifying fate of being  _ saved. _

He wonders if this is what was intended when the Adrestian Emperor agreed to their imprisonment terms. Are these the cracks Yuri vied to form in them? Felix feels cracks, spindling out in spiderwebs down his skin—but they’re not of anger, or resentment. He feels safer than ever, vulnerable in a way that signals two additional shields drawn around him. It’s windbitten and raw but it is not… dooming. He’s not sure what he’s feeling, really. He’s not sure why he’s bothering to think it through. All he knows is that Sylvain and Ingrid have conspired to protect him, and he’s not as against it as he feels he should be.

In four more tournaments he will not have to finish these thoughts. Enbarr will fall, and a King that Felix recognizes only in glimpses will pull Felix, and Ingrid, and Sylvain, from the depths. Felix will be asked to celebrate a finale he has been absent from, alongside his newfound lack of captivity. Felix will no longer have to think in terms of strategy. He will no longer have to strategize over the safety of their small, closeknit trio. He will no longer have to hear the jeering crowd’s chants at Ingrid, or clutch his fingernails into his palms as Sylvain takes a hit that teeters him ever-closer to death. 

Felix does not know this, now. Such celebrations are still four tournaments away. He does not know, now, how long his current fate will last. And so he simply allows Sylvain to drape a steady hand over his body and whisper assurances to him. Felix accepts Sylvain’s hope at face value. 

Felix closes his eyes. And for the first time in a long while, Felix dreams of their freedom.


End file.
